


two slow dancers, last ones out

by knoxoursavior



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Haikyuu!! Manga Spoilers, M/M, Post-Time Skip, Retirement, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25336246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knoxoursavior/pseuds/knoxoursavior
Summary: Some things never change, Tobio thinks. Kunimi looks just as beautiful as ever.
Relationships: Kageyama Tobio/Kunimi Akira
Comments: 12
Kudos: 76





	two slow dancers, last ones out

**Author's Note:**

> knkg at their 20 year middle school reunion!! i was listening to mitski again and the vibes of two slow dancers just fit them so well ugh
> 
> anw kunimi's look lowkey inspired by [this](https://assets.vogue.com/photos/5f06286bf72fbf3c669493fa/master/w_900,c_limit/00047-Saint-Laurent-Womens-Pre-Fall-2020.jpg) saint laurent look from prefall 2020..

Tobio finds Kunimi outside, standing just below the concrete steps. His back is turned, but Tobio recognizes him anyway. He and Kindaichi are immortalized in Tobio's memory—every smile, every gesture, every cutting word. But their backs are especially clear to him.

Kunimi turns, and Tobio freezes in place at the sight of him, hair just a little bit disheveled, some strands falling over his face, his lips wrapped around a lit cigarette. He has one hand on his hip, holding his suit jacket open to reveal a silk shirt underneath, tucked into his pants, buttons undone to his navel.

Some things never change, Tobio thinks. Kunimi looks just as beautiful as ever.

He looks like he could be from another world, but the warm light spilling out from the gymnasium paints over him. He looks softer in this light, his sharpness blunted, sanded down into something that won't hurt if Tobio dared to touch him. He looks like the version of Kunimi in Tobio's memories who would grace him with a smile. Who would walk beside him when they were children while Kindaichi ran ahead of them, still brimming with energy. He looks like the version of Kunimi that Tobio longs for, and it makes Tobio's chest ache, looking at him. 

“Shut the door. You're letting the cold air in.”

Tobio wills himself to breathe, wills himself to look away. He shuts the door like Kunimi asked, and he goes down the steps— _one, two, three_ —until he's standing beside Kunimi, looking out at the packed parking lot.

Finally, Tobio is by his side once again.

“Kindaichi said I'd find you here,” Tobio says.

The smell of Kunimi's cigarette permeates the air around him. Tobio wonders when he started smoking. Wonders if all of Kunimi smells like cigarettes too—his breath, his hair, his clothes.

“You were looking for me?” Kunimi asks.

“Yes.”

When Kunimi turns to him, he wills himself to meet Kunimi's gaze. There's a sly curve to Kunimi's lips, and Tobio readies himself for whatever Kunimi means to throw his way.

“Wanted to see me that bad, Kageyama?” 

Easily, Tobio answers, “Yes.”

Kunimi's expression melts away into something unreadable, something unreachable. He takes another drag of his cigarette, long and slow. His chest rises with it, and Tobio can't help but be drawn to the way moonlight shifts along Kunimi's skin, as if gently kissing the planes of his torso, worshipping all that it touches. 

“Wanna smoke?” Kunimi asks. His hand shakes when he reaches up to offer Tobio his cigarette. Tobio wants to reach out and steady him; he doesn't. Instead, he looks at the cigarette, already half-smoked.

Tobio is being offered poison and yet he wants to accept it anyway. He wonders if this is what temptation feels like. 

“Okay,” he says, but when he reaches out to take the cigarette, it disappears from Kunimi's grasp. Falls to the ground and disappears underneath Kunimi's boot.

Tobio's hand is left in the space between them, unable to go further. He is more disappointed than he should be.

Kunimi's hand disappears into his pocket. Tobio's hand falls to his side.

“Shouldn't you be taking care of your body as a professional athlete?” Kunimi says.

Tobio looks away. “I'm not a professional athlete anymore. They're announcing it soon.”

It's gotten easier and easier for him to say it. The admission doesn't leave a bitter taste on his tongue anymore, doesn't make him want to scream, to curl into himself until he implodes.

Still, the words are heavy in the air between them. Still, Tobio doesn't want to know how Kunimi reacts to it. 

But Kunimi doesn't give him much of a choice. Tobio feels Kunimi's hand on his shoulder, and that's all it takes for him to look. 

Kunimi's eyebrows are furrowed, his lips twisted into a frown. His touch is barely there, barely felt through the fabric of Tobio's jacket, but it's the closest he's been to Kunimi in years. He wills himself not to lean into it.

“Don't say things like that,” Kunimi says. “The whole country would be devastated.”

_That isn't true,_ Tobio thinks, but he catches himself. Turns the thought over in his head until he catches the cause and effect. The media has been talking about his age, yes. His impending retirement, his decreasing time on the court, his choice to decline being part of the national team roster for Worlds.

It isn't that they want him to stop playing. It isn't that they wouldn't be, as Kunimi said, devastated to hear that he will be retiring. But an athlete's career has an expiration date much earlier than most would like, and everyone knows it. Tobio knows it too, has struggled with it. He wants to keep playing, wants to be on the court for the rest of his life, volleyball in his hand and the whole world in front of him.

But he's learned to accept it. Not entirely, not with his whole being, but enough. Playing professionally isn't the only way to be on the court, and it isn't the only way to play.

“It doesn't matter what they think,” Tobio says.

Kunimi steps closer to him, and Tobio wills himself not to mirror the action. Kunimi's hand is still on his shoulder, but now his grip is tight, solid.

“I'd be disappointed if you stopped,” Kunimi says, and it makes Tobio's chest ache, makes doubt bloom in his mind once again before he tamps down on it, wills it to disappear. 

He reaches up, curls his hand around Kunimi's. Tobio is cold, but Kunimi is even colder. He's been out here for too long. 

Tobio turns so he's facing Kunimi, and then he takes both of Kunimi's hands in his, hoping that there's enough warmth in him for Kunimi to take.

“Please don't be,” he says. His thumb brushes against Kunimi's knuckles, skimming over the little nicks and cuts on his skin. Even when they were children, Kunimi's skin would crack in the cold, and Tobio would worry. Kunimi, at times, seemed so delicate, like he would break if Tobio touched him, or if Tobio sent a ball his way that was too quick with too much force behind it. 

But Tobio knows better now. Kunimi is anything but fragile.

“Should I be happy for you?” Kunimi asks.

When Tobio looks up at him, his expression is unreadable. For a moment, Tobio wonders if he would know the meaning of every shift, every little change in Kunimi's expression had they stayed friends longer than they did. For a moment, Tobio mourns the years they've had to spend apart.

Kindaichi was… easy. He always has been. Easy to forgive, easy to forget. Kindaichi has always been kinder than Tobio deserved, and seeing him again today, slipping into casual conversation with him so easily—it only shines a light on Kindaichi's heart, too big for his own good. 

Kunimi's friendship is a great deal different from Kindaichi's, but it's not any lesser for it. Kunimi has always pulled when Tobio pushed, has always stood stock still when Tobio demanded that he jump. 

Telling him how he should feel isn't something that he'd appreciate. Kunimi's question feels like a trap carefully laid, a test to see who Tobio is. There isn't one right answer, but there is a wrong one, and Tobio has long since learned it.

But the thing is—

The thing is Tobio _does_ wish that Kunimi would be happy for him. Because him retiring means being with Kunimi and Kindaichi again, finally fulfilling the promise of playing with them again even if they're old and rickety.

He should just shake his head, let the moment pass with the truth stuck in his throat, but it bares its claws and escapes him. 

“I wish you were happy to see me,” he says, and regrets it right away.

Kunimi wrenches his hands away from him, and Tobio doesn't fight it. Only watches as Kunimi pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, as Kunimi taps the bottom of the pack against his palm until a cigarette peeks out from the top.

But Tobio stops him before he can get it. Stops him with a hand around his wrist, grip slack, loose enough that Kunimi can pull away if he wants to.

He doesn't. 

“Kunimi,” Tobio says. “Come back inside with me instead.”

Kunimi looks back at him, eyes narrowed.

“Why?”

Tobio feels out of his depth again. He is coming up blank, and the harder he tries to think of an answer, the worse the silence in his mind becomes.

But then Kunimi starts to pull away again, and suddenly, the words come out of his mouth, unbidden.

“I want to ask you to dance with me.”

Kunimi rolls his eyes. This time, when he tugs his hand back, Tobio lets him.

“Go ask Kindaichi.”

Tobio flexes his hand as it falls to his side. His palm is cold; he wonders if that's why he's shaking.

“I already did,” Tobio says. “He's very bad at it.”

Kunimi laughs. Sudden and beautiful, like fireworks blazing up in the sky. Like the warmth that blooms in Tobio's chest, spreading to the tips of his hands and the tips of his toes.

“You say that like you'd be good at dancing.”

Tobio should be offended, but he can't find it in himself to do anything but cling onto the warmth of Kunimi's laughter, the warmth in his chest.

“I'll show you,” he says, and he _hopes._ “Kunimi. Please?” 

A beat passes, and Tobio waits. Another, and Tobio still waits, hoping. 

And then Kunimi takes his hand.

“We can dance right here.”

Tobio's heart feels like it's much too big for his chest. But Tobio's hand fits just right in Kunimi's, and it fits just right against the curve of Kunimi's waist too, when Kunimi tells Tobio to hold him. 

They stand barely a foot apart, swaying along to the music playing inside the gymnasium, muffled through the walls. Tobio's heartbeat is much louder in his ears, and it grows louder with every passing moment, every minute that Kunimi keeps his eyes on Tobio.

And then Kunimi ducks his head. And then he says, “Do you remember when you called out to us after one of your games with the Adlers, and you told us that you wanted to play with us again?”

Tobio doesn't know if being unable to see Kunimi's expression makes it easier or harder to breathe.

“Of course,” he says, but he doesn't say how often he's thought of that moment recently. How he has dug his fingers into it and how he has held onto it like a drowning man would cling onto his only lifeline.

“I don't think I really believed you meant it, but it was nice to hear,” Kunimi says, and it hurts, knowing that. It makes Tobio's chest ache. 

It will always be one of his biggest regrets, the way things ended with Kunimi and Kindaichi. And he has always wanted to reconcile with them, to play with them. To be their friend again, really, truly. And after playing volleyball professionally for so long, after playing against the world, this is the only thing left for him to take on.

“I meant it. I _still_ mean it.” Tobio stops where he is, and Kunimi stops with him. He steps closer to Kunimi, his grip tightening around Kunimi's hand and Kunimi's waist, and Kunimi only looks up at him, eyes wide. He is anything but fragile, and yet in this moment, he makes Tobio want to hold him, to wrap him in his arms and keep him close.

Instead, Tobio asks once again, “Will you play with me again, Kunimi?” 

Kunimi's lips curl up into a smile—small, barely there, but beautiful in its existence anyway. 

“What did Kindaichi say when you asked him?” he asks And then, rolling his eyes, “Oh, what am I saying? Of course he said yes.”

Tobio feels himself smiling too. Like he can't help it. Like Kunimi is the sky, and Tobio is the sea, reflecting his endless bright blue.

“Kunimi,” he protests, but he is ignored.

Kunimi sighs, and then his hand slides from Tobio's shoulder to Tobio's cheek. Kunimi feels warm now. Like a crackling fire and microwaved milk. Comforting.

“You're both going to break something, playing against each other.”

Tobio leans into Kunimi's touch, and Kunimi lets him. It feels like a step in the right direction. It feels like peace. 

“We're old men,” he says. “We're going to break something no matter what we do.”

Kunimi's eyes crinkle when he smiles with his entire being. Tobio has watched it happen from afar too many times to count, but now there is only him and Kunimi, and Tobio basks in it. 

Some things never change, Tobio thinks. But some things do. And some things, once believed to be gone forever, come back into his reach.

“Alright, I'll play with you. I already said I would then, didn't I? I won't go back on my word,” Kunimi says. And then he steps even closer to Tobio, as if he hasn't already given Tobio enough today.

And then he wraps his arms around Tobio's shoulders and presses his cheek against Tobio's neck. It's too much and too little at the same time, and all Tobio can do is to hold him just as tightly as Kunimi's holding him.

Tobio presses his smile against Kunimi's hair. “Thank you.”

“Hey, Kageyama,” Kunimi says. The words are muffled, uttered into Tobio's skin. Like a secret just for Tobio to hear. “I am happy to see you.” 

Tobio closes his eyes. They start to sway again. This time, it's to a different tune.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/singeiji)!!


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